


Reboot

by sinestrated



Series: Reboot [1]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 03:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinestrated/pseuds/sinestrated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John waits for his partner to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reboot

**Author's Note:**

> Why the hell did I write this?

Coming home is an ordeal. John can’t help the breath he takes as he pushes the door open and says, “Hey partner, you up?”

No answer. He crushes the disappointment with practiced ease and tosses his keys onto the counter. Metal meets metal with a scratchy _clink_ , the sound enough to grate on John’s eardrums. He can only imagine how much it annoys Dorian.

Still no response. John drags his keys along the counter anyway, producing another nails-on-chalkboard screech, just on principle. “My house, my rules,” he says.

Dorian stares at the ceiling. His eyes are glassy and blank, like two marbles glued into his skull. There is no life in them. John looks away.

 

_“He won’t wake up,” said Rudy, sounding both sad and intrigued. “All possible startup sequences have been disabled. Only way to revive him now is to find and input the same serial code he used to override his primary processors.”_

_“How many possible permutations?” John asked._

_“About sixteen billion.”_

_Despair clawed at John’s insides, cold and unforgiving. He wrestled it down, and his voice only came out slightly strangled as he said, “How long?”_

_Rudy hummed, softly. “Years,” he answered. “Decades.”_

_They fell into silence. John looked down at Dorian stretched out on the table, still and blank and completely unrecognizable. It made him ache._

_Next to him, Rudy sighed and dragged a tired palm across his face. “Some days I still can’t believe it, you know?” he said. “A bot voluntarily deactivating itself due to sensory input overload. It’s…” He blew out a breath, and his voice dropped._

_“It’s the synthetic equivalent of suicide.”_

Dinner is one of Stahl’s casseroles. Cheese, mushrooms, too many onions, and overcooked meat from something that probably died in the street outside her house. John mutters, “Girl’s pretty but can’t cook for shit,” and chokes down another bite.

Still lying on the couch, hands folded, eyes open, Dorian says nothing.

 

_“I looked over his data log,” Rudy said. The glow from the computer monitor cast a pale blue light across his features as he scrolled through a jumble of numbers and codes. “They activated his nociceptive interface.”_

_John looked up. “His what?”_

_Rudy turned. “All DRN models come standard with a state-of-the-art transmission-based sensory network, similar to the human nervous system,” he said. “It allows them to feel textures and temperatures...and, of course, pain.”_

_John swallowed. “How much pain?”_

_“As much as you or I could feel,” Rudy answered. “Perhaps more.” He shifted. “Default settings render the nociceptive interface inert. But these guys found a way to bypass his OS. They turned it on. Every single node.”_

_John’s fists clenched at his sides. “For how long?”_

_Rudy cut his eyes away. “About a week.”_

_The rage filled him like an inferno. John looked down at Dorian and fought for his control._

_Rudy told him once that DRNs were the only bots to be manufactured with actual tear ducts, to better imitate human emotion. When John found Dorian three days ago, still and unmoving on the floor of the abandoned warehouse, his partner was already gone._

_But there were salt tracks on his cheeks._

 

There’s only one couch, so John unceremoniously shoves Dorian’s legs out of the way and plops himself down on the end, cracking open his beer.

“Didn’t tell you, did I?” he says, swirling the amber liquid around. “Another MX bites the dust. ‘Tripped’ and fell down a conveniently empty elevator shaft. The captain damn near lost her mind over that one.”

No response. John sighs, takes a quick, bitter swallow, and flicks on the television with a wave of his hand. “Yeah, you’d probably want to hold a funeral and eulogize it and shit,” he murmurs.

 _Yes, but I’d make you pay for it,_ Dorian doesn’t answer.

 

_Maldonado watched him across her desk, gaze soft and painfully sympathetic. “It’s been two weeks, John,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s time you moved on?”_

_John narrowed his eyes. “With what? My partner’s still unconscious.”_

_Maldonado sighed. “With your job,” she said. “With your_ life. _John, the DRN unit was good for you. Hell, he grew on me too. But Dorian’s gone. Deactivated. Nonfunctional. I can’t just keep him in Rudy’s lab downstairs collecting dust.”_

_“So…what?” John really didn’t like the note of desperation that crept into his voice. “What’ll you do with him?”_

_It took her a moment to reply. When she did, she couldn’t quite seem to meet his gaze. “There’s…a reclamation company that has a contract with the department,” she said. “The DRN’s obsolete, but they could still use some of the basic parts—”_

_“_ No. _” John was on his feet before he was even fully aware of it. “Are you out of your fucking mind, you can’t just—he’s not like the others, he’s a hu—”_

_The word caught in his throat, and he swallowed, looking away. “You just…can’t.”_

_Maldonado watched him for a long time. John refused to meet her gaze, looking out instead past the glass walls of her office to the MXs standing guard by the door, their faces smooth and blank. Utterly lifeless._

_Finally, Maldonado took a breath and laid her palms out on her desk. “What would you have me do?” she asked, sounding tired. “He’s out of commission, John. He won’t wake up. What use is he?”_

_John turned back from the wall. “I don’t know,” he growled. “About as much as I was?”_

_Silence. Maldonado lost her expression for a moment, and John forced himself to keep looking at her. His captain closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened them again._

_Then she reached across her desk to open a transmission. “Lom.”_

_A beep. “_ Yes, ma’am? _”_

_“Have the DRN unit packaged and delivered to Kennex’s residence.”_

_“_ Ah…okay. _”_

_Maldonado looked up at John. Whatever expression he had made her lips twitch into a wry smile. “What? Got an objection, Detective?”_

_When he didn’t answer, unable to speak around the sudden lump in his throat, she nodded and straightened some papers on her desk. “Starting tomorrow you’re back on active duty, new MX partner,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re doing, John.”_

_John did too._

The cable channel’s playing some terrible procedural cop show, all ridiculously dolled-up witnesses and lab technicians in five-inch heels and scowling detectives with badges bigger than their goddamned heads. John hates this crap. It’s nothing like the real thing, and he thinks if any of the show’s producers got the chance to ride with him and Dorian for a day, they’d piss themselves and run off screaming.

He moves to change the channel. Then he looks at Dorian, who for some reason loved these stupid shows, and lets it play.

 

_“Did anyone talk to you?” Stahl asked, as they sat eating lunch in the lounge. “When you were out, I mean.”_

_John shrugged. “Never asked.”_

_“Oh.”_

_Silence. John swallows his mouthful and says, “Why do you ask?”_

_“Nothing, really.” Stahl shrugs, but even John can see through her forced nonchalance. “Just, y’know. Something I read once, about coma patients.”_

_“What?”_

_“That if you talk to them…it helps.” Stahl poked her fork into her salad again. She didn’t seem to mind that John said nothing for the entire rest of the hour._

 

When he wakes, the sky outside is dark. John groans, stretching against the ache in his neck and shoulders as he straightens from where he’d been sprawled back on the couch. Some unnamed sketch comedy show plays on the television. He flicks it off.

Dorian is still lying where John left him, one leg hanging off the edge of the couch. John snorts. “Coulda woke me up, asshole.”

Dorian doesn’t answer. His eyes stay blank pools of black, not a hint of blue.

John swallows. “Dorian.”

Nothing.

“Dorian, it’s been three fucking months. _Say_ something.”

Silence.

The world closes in. An ugly lump of pain and sorrow rises at the back of John’s throat, and he leaps to his feet. The empty beer bottle shatters against the wall. “Goddamnit, Dorian, you fucking fuck! Wake the fuck up!”

Dorian continues to stare at the ceiling.

Something hot and angry and dangerously familiar pricks at the corners of John’s eyes. He ducks his head.

“You can’t leave,” he whispers, and his voice is so small, so insignificant in the vast emptiness of the room. “I’ve lost so many people already. You can’t. _Dorian._ ”

Dorian doesn’t answer.

“ _Please._ ”

Still nothing.

His partner is dead.

John turns away and takes a deep, trembling breath. “Okay,” he murmurs, as he slowly weaves his way toward his bedroom. “Okay.”

He pauses at the door and looks back at the darkened living room, at the still, human figure lying on the couch. One more day, he thinks. One more day, and if Dorian doesn’t wake up, John will take him back to the station. Just like he told himself yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.

He’s never been good at keeping promises. Maybe, someday, Dorian will teach him how.

John watches him for a moment longer before finally turning away. “Night, partner,” he murmurs, into the silence.

The door closes behind him.

In the sudden, pitch blackness, Dorian blinks.

**Author's Note:**

> Bad guys purposely unnamed in this story. Mostly because I don't know the universe well enough yet.
> 
>  **Regarding translations:** All my works, including this one, can be translated without first asking my express permission. I ask only that you credit me as the original author and provide a link back to the original work. For anything other than translations, please ask first. Thanks.


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